“I have lost a fortune, a wife, and—­”

“And a mistress,” said Madame Schontz, smiling.  “Here you are, more than married; you will be insufferable, you will be always wanting to get home, there will be nothing loose about you, neither your clothes nor your habits.  And, after all, my Arthur does things in style.  I will be faithful to him and cut Malaga’s acquaintance.

“Let me peep at her through the door—­your Sancerre Muse,” she went on.  “Is there no finer bird than that to be found in the desert?” she exclaimed.  “You are cheated!  She is dignified, lean, lachrymose; she only needs Lady Dudley’s turban!”

“What is it now?” asked Madame de la Baudraye, who had heard the rustle of a silk dress and the murmur of a woman’s voice.

“It is, my darling, that we are now indissolubly united.—­I have just had an answer to the letter you saw me write, which was to break off my marriage——­”

“So that was the party which you gave up?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, I will be more than your wife—­I am your slave, I give you my life,” said the poor deluded creature.  “I did not believe I could love you more than I did!—­Now I shall not be a mere incident, but your whole life?”

“Yes, my beautiful, my generous Didine.”

“Swear to me,” said she, “that only death shall divide us.”

Lousteau was ready to sweeten his vows with the most fascinating prettinesses.  And this was why.  Between the door of the apartment where he had taken the lorette’s farewell kiss, and that of the drawing-room, where the Muse was reclining, bewildered by such a succession of shocks, Lousteau had remembered little De la Baudraye’s precarious health, his fine fortune, and Bianchon’s remark about Dinah, “She will be a rich widow!” and he said to himself, “I would a hundred times rather have Madame de la Baudraye for a wife than Felicie!”

His plan of action was quickly decided on; he determined to play the farce of passion once more, and to perfection.  His mean self-interestedness and his false vehemence of passion had disastrous results.  Madame de la Baudraye, when she set out from Sancerre for Paris, had intended to live in rooms of her own quite near to Lousteau; but the proofs of devotion her lover had given her by giving up such brilliant prospects, and yet more the perfect happiness of the first days of their illicit union, kept her from mentioning such a parting.  The second day was to be—­and indeed was—­a high festival, in which such a suggestion proposed to “her angel” would have been a discordant note.

Lousteau, on his part, anxious to make Dinah feel herself dependent on him, kept her in a state of constant intoxication by incessant amusement.  These circumstances hindered two persons so clever as these were from avoiding the slough into which they fell—­that of a life in common, a piece of folly of which, unfortunately, many instances may be seen in Paris in literary circles.